


A Little Chat

by ImperfectPitch



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Seattle Garages (Blaseball Team), Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28171470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImperfectPitch/pseuds/ImperfectPitch
Summary: The 7th regular season of Blaseball is drawing to a close, and Jaylen Hotdogfingers is lost in her own thoughts after an otherwise unremarkable game against the Hawaii Fridays almost went horribly wrong. Her spiraling is interrupted by Luis Acevedo, who wants to have "a little chat" with her.
Kudos: 14





	A Little Chat

The game was finally over, but the relief Jaylen had been hoping to feel didn't follow. All around her the rest of the Garages were celebrating and making plans to join the Fridays for yet another cookout. Nothing wrong with that. Seattle could use more of the good vibes that seemed to follow the Fridays to away games. Hell, _she_ could use some too. And yet right now all Jaylen Hotdogfingers wanted to do was find a dark quiet place to disappear for a while.

It irritated her how childish that desire felt. They had won with a comfortable lead and nobody had died. What more could you ask of a game of Blaseball?

She could imagine what. She hadn't stopped thinking about the 8th inning. Watching in horror as the arc of the pitch twisted away from the strike zone. Screaming in her head _**No no no! Godsdamn you he's a child don't you fucking dare!**_ The flash and thud of Luis popping into being beside York and catching the errant ball. The faint scent of scorched leather and ozone. The palpable disappointment in the ump's voice as they solemnly intoned **"Ball 1-1"**.

She had tried so damn hard this time. Every inning, every _pitch_ , all of her focus was on getting through the day without hurting anyone else. She had wanted it so fucking badly... But the gods had wanted their payment more. If Luis hadn't intervened... She couldn't have lived with herself. Her guilt over every player who had been 'collected' was already intolerable before the gods had tried to claim an _actual fucking child_ to balance the ledger. It went beyond profane. So many had been taken already and _still_ there was no end in sight. How many more would perish before the gods were satisfied? 

Maybe all it would take was just one? Maybe the next time she took the mound under that blackened sky they would just take her and be done with it. Why not encourage them? Refuse to pitch, like Tot had, and just wait for them to call her bluff. Would that really be so-

"Hey, Jaylen! Wait up a second!"

She spun on her heel to find the Garages one-and-only Vocaloid three inches from her face and beaming at her.

Jaylen checked herself and maintained her composure. She didn't become mayor of Seattle by letting people know they'd gotten the drop on her.

"Luis. You know, I could have sworn we already had a little chat about respecting personal space."

Luis pouted, but took a step back. "Nobody seems to mind when I sneak up on Malik and make him jump half-way up to the rafters. Not even Malik, once he manages to catch me."

"Really? Well then forget what I said and go surprise him right now. If he's anything like our old Malik he's already at the party talking non-stop about gunblades with York Si-" the whole scene flashed through her mind yet again, leaving the words to die on her lips. “...yes, why don’t you go do that? I’m sure everyone would be delighted.” 

“I could… but I think everyone would like it even more if you came with us. Even for a little while.”

Jaylen shifted uncomfortably. “That’s very sweet of you Luis, but I’m not really up for a party at the moment.”

“We, uh... sort of noticed. You kind of up and left after the game without saying a word to anyone. Most of us want to let you have your space with everything that’s been happening, but I’d really like to check in with you first.”

“I have a lot on my mind right now and I don’t particularly want to talk with anyone.”

“Yeah, that’s actually kind of the reason I think we need to have a little chat. Like, right now.”

Luis, chipper bubbly Luis, was staring at her with uncharacteristic seriousness.

"There’s something I want you to know. Before we did... Whatever it was exactly, the band had a long discussion about the cost of bringing you back. We-"

Jaylen cut them off. "Don't even go there. I've already made it clear how I feel about what you did. Especially what happened to Mike."

"This isn't about Mike, Jaylen. This is about me."

That caught her off guard. Luis let the silence hang in the air for a few moments before continuing.

“I’ve been walking around for a very long time, you know? I know exactly what it’s like to feel completely helpless while you watch the people around you die. Even before I became a Blaseball player I lost so many people I cared about. I would try so hard to help, but no matter what I did something always got them in the end. Jay, I know the look of someone asking themselves ‘why was I the one who gets to live?’. I know it because I’ve been there before. 

"We didn't know what would happen if we actually managed to bring you back, but most of us had a feeling that the gods would take it out on us somehow. 'A life for a life', or something like it. Mike was one of the obvious targets. I was the other one."

Jaylen was at a loss for words. In all the explanations she’d been given of her resurrection, this detail had never once come up before.

“Like I said, nobody was sure what would happen if we succeeded. It wasn’t unthinkable that you’d come back to the team as a batter, just so the gods could rub salt in the wound. I might be cute, and I might be a good fielder, but I am hands down the worst batter on our lineup. I knew I was putting myself at risk if we tried to get you back, but I still volunteered to go.”

“Luis… I could never have asked you to-”

"Sometimes helping a friend means you have to take risks." Luis cut in, tugging at the laces on their mitt. "And what I did back on the field? That was a big risk." 

The mitt came off and Luis held out a luminescent hand, flexing their digits. Jaylen watched in horrified fascination as something like a muscle spasm ran over the hologram skin and, for just a split second, the whole hand flickered like a visual glitch. 

_Are they…? Did I...?_ Her blood ran cold at the thought. 

Luis gave the arm a quick shake, then looked back at her with an uneasy grin. “I’m not suuuuuper sure I could get away with that a second time. Maybe I’m lucky to have gotten away with it just the once. I still think it was the right call to take that risk, but that makes it hurt more when I saw that you are seriously thinking about just giving up without asking for our help.”

The last remark stung. Before she could get a grip on herself she was screaming. “So what then? Are you saying I should just suck it up and accept this horror-story that is my life now?!”

“No. Be sad. Be angry. Be ungrateful if you want to be, because you're right: we _didn't_ ask your permission before we did this. But don't you dare hope for death, Jaylen! Not after all this." Luis was crying now. Sparkling motes of light fell from their cheeks. For a moment Jaylen couldn't help but wonder what would happen when the falling tears reached the ground, but her own vision was too blurry to see it. 

With a sob that shook their whole body, Luis collapsed against her. "I can't even imagine how the band would deal with losing you a second time. Don't you **fucking dare** wish that on us!"

She broke down then, and she was glad only Luis was there to see it. The two of them sat in the hallway and cried together for a long while.

Luis found their voice first.

"I've cheated death a lot, Jay. I don't want to die, and I don't want anyone else to die either. That includes Jaylen Hotdogfingers, pitcher for the Seattle Garages. Please remember that you don’t have to take this all on yourself. We all hit our breaking point eventually, but all that means is that we need someone there to catch us when we fail. That’s what makes the team so much stronger than the sum of its parts. It’s a lesson we had to figure out the hard way after we lost you, even if some of us don’t fully realize they’ve learned it.”

“Heh… we really are a bunch of dysfunctional fuck-ups, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, but at least we have each other to keep us from screwing up too badly. Just… try to remember to ask us for help when you need it.”

\----

Before the end of the night, Jaylen made up her mind and asked Allison who had done the ink work for the phoenix and hotdog on her forearm. After explaining what she was looking for Abbott wasted no time roping in Farrell Seagull, who offered to help draft concept art for each tattoo Jaylen wanted. Seagull, Jaylen was reminded, had seen her own share of tragedies from her time playing for the Miami Dale. 

The very next day another two names were added to the list. By the bottom of the ninth, Jaylen had an appointment put on her schedule for the moment the regular season ended.

Jaylen Hotdogfingers, Mayor of Seattle and Dark-Seattle, was having a memorial commissioned on a medium donated by Jaylen Hotdogfingers, Pitcher for the Seattle Garages. Every Blaseball player claimed as payment by the gods would have a place reserved for them. She wanted all of them to be with her in spirit so that when Jaylen Hotdogfingers, the "Killer Queen" of the IBL, put a knuckleball straight through that giant fucking Peanut it would have no question what it had done to deserve it.

**Author's Note:**

> Author's note: I find it just the slightest bit unsettling how prescient this fic now feels to me. I've changed very little from the first draft I wrote prior to the Season 7 Playoffs, and some of the story beats hit differently in hindsight... particularly my decision to describe Luis' hand "flickering" as a consequence of catching the would-be beanball.


End file.
